Japan Marine United (JMU) has officially started work on the deep-sea 30MW Southern Akita Floating Offshore Demonstration Project.
A consortium consisting of nine companies led by Marubeni Offshore Wind Development Corporation will work on the scheme to install two floating turbines with a capacity of over 15MW each.
The site is located approximately 25km off the coast of southern Akita Prefecture, in water depths of approximately 400 metres.
The project period is from August 2024 to March 2031, and the demonstrative wind farm will start operation around the autumn of 2029.
The scheme has been selected as the Phase 2 of Japan’s Green Innovation Fund, granted by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
During the Phase 1 of the GI Fund from FY2021 to FY2023, JMU has conducted R&D for reducing the cost of fabrication and installation of floating substructures using semi-submersible floating substructure design developed by JMU.
In this project, JMU will conduct R&D on the following seven themes to solve further technical challenges for the social implementation of floating offshore wind by utilising knowledge from Phase 1.